Met Navipract verleen je complexe zorg efficiënter én beter

In ziekenhuizen, maar ook in andere zorginstellingen zoals de GGZ, werken zorgverleners vaak met complexe richtlijnen. In die richtlijnen zit een ongelooflijke hoeveelheid medische kennis, maar het praktisch toepassen ervan is, zelfs voor ervaren zorgverleners, niet makkelijk. En het onderhouden, up to date houden en aanpassen ervan kost veel tijden energie. Navipract lost die problemen op door zorgrichtlijnen op een totaal nieuwe manier digitaal op te slaan en beschikbaar te maken.

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Software and data to integrate protocols into your working processes

In hospitals, but also in other healthcare institutions such as those for mental health care, healthcare providers often work with complex protocols. These protocols contain an incredible amount of medical knowledge, but applying them in practice is not easy, even for experienced healthcare providers. And maintaining, updating and adapting them takes a lot of time and energy. Navipract solves these problems by digitally storing and making care protocols available in a completely new way.

Care protocols are complex. Much more complex than most workflows we encounter in the business world. Too complex to remember or to perform ‘based on experience’. An oncologist, for example, who treats a rare form of cancer will always have to consult the protocol to determine the next treatment step.

Protocols are also developed in international collaborations and are continuously adapted to the state of the art, while they can only be applied in practice if they are completely tailored to the local situation: names of medicines, responsible departments and other local details are essential for the care to run smoothly.

This specific protocol is then usually elaborated by expensive and scarce nurses and doctors in a text file and distributed throughout the organization as a PDF/HTML document. If something changes in the basic protocol, the organization-specific protocol must be changed. If something changes in the organization or on the pharmaceutical market, several protocols will probably have to be adjusted.

Navipract replaces the PDF/HTML files

The PDF/HTML documents that doctors currently work with are therefore almost always outdated. In addition, all sorts of things can go wrong when using them, such as incorrectly typing or calculating a dose or medication name. In addition, healthcare providers spend far too much time searching for and verifying protocols. This searching, and often not finding, of the correct version of a protocol is a major problem in healthcare organizations with many protocols, such as hospitals. The reason is that the PDF files can only be found using manually applied 'tags'.

Navipract is an application, built in collaboration with scientists, doctors, nurses and pharmacists, that converts existing clinical protocols into structured workflows and offers them digitally. This not only makes them much easier to maintain, but healthcare providers can also follow them much better and more efficiently. Navipract also solves the search problems by making the titles, full text and lists of diagnoses and treatments searchable.

The result: better collaboration and higher patient safety.

Because wasn't that the whole idea of treatment protocols based on? That we record step by step how the treatment should proceed and under what conditions and thus provide better care? Navipract can do what PDF files cannot. Due to the structured way of storing and presenting protocols, it is a fully-fledged workflow and decision-making system and forms an ideal supplement to the patient or client information in the EPD or ECD by showing the practical steps that a healthcare provider must take to properly carry out a treatment.

A navigation system for complex care

If the PDF document is a road map, Navipract is the navigation app. Instead of doctors having to search through a long, outdated text document, our app tells them what the next step should be and what conditions they need to meet to continue with the treatment.

The structured storage of treatment protocols also makes it possible to adapt general protocols to local circumstances, while still being able to adopt improvements with little effort.

The searchability and standardization of the protocols also makes it much easier to implement the same change in dozens of protocols at the same time, whereas this now has to be done manually in a long list of text files.

A standard glossary of medical terms also ensures that everyone is talking about the same thing and using the same wording. This prevents the subtle differences in approach that can cause so much confusion and therefore delay in a care process.

A huge positive impact on care

Higher quality. If protocols are better maintained and followed, this reduces the chance of errors and makes treatments more effective
Lower costs. Fewer healthcare professionals behind desks, less time lost for consultation or searching in protocols
Less stress. A healthcare professional knows what needs to be done
Lower cognitive load. The focus of a good workflow tool leads to better decisions
Protocols are available anytime, anywhere. A healthcare professional can look up the protocol on any mobile device. Even in sterile environments, such as an operating room
Protocols are searchable. Navipract's AI-based search engine makes browsing through folders full of protocols a thing of the past
Easy knowledge sharing. No more 'islands' of knowledge, where protocols differ from country to country, from hospital to hospital and sometimes even from department to department, but care teams that work with the latest medical knowledge
Better patient safety. Following the protocol exactly eliminates many risks

Benefits at the organizational level

But those are only the benefits in the care process itself. At the organizational level, deploying Navipract also has many benefits, in addition to the effect on costs. This starts with freeing up highly qualified staff: in the current situation, experienced care providers are busy managing and editing care protocols every day. Navipract puts an end to that.

Another advantage for the organization lies in data collection. Without a good workflow system, it is not possible to measure the extent to which care protocols are actually followed. This is a serious problem for hospitals that regularly have to demonstrate the quality of care provided in audits.

With the data from Navipract, you as a healthcare institution know exactly which steps practitioners take and to what extent they adhere to the latest version of the protocols. If something is not going well, you also know immediately where and you can intervene in a targeted manner.

Who is Navipract intended for?

Not every form of care requires a tool like Navipract. The development of Navipract began (under the name ‘Practocol’) in pediatric oncology. This is a form of care that treats many rare diseases with complex treatment protocols that are developed in intensive, international collaboration. Pediatric oncologists have therefore been looking for a good way to work with these protocols for a long time.

Navipract is therefore, due to its origins, very suitable for oncological treatments and the treatment of rare diseases. But also outside the hospital, such as in mental health care, practitioners work under high pressure with complex protocols. And these healthcare providers also have to deal with high demands on the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of their work.

Future developments

Navipract is a mature protocol tool that is ready to be used in all forms of complex, protocol-driven care. But of course we are continuously looking for functionality that can help healthcare providers even better. These are functions that we would like to add quickly:

Community and platform. The more physicians contribute to the protocols in Navipract, the higher the quality and the greater the productivity gain. We therefore find it important to get as many users as possible on our platform and to let these users collaborate on protocols across organizational and national borders.

Access for patient and family. It would be great if patients, clients or family could also watch along. Many of the questions that practitioners now have to answer are about the how, what and why of certain treatment steps. Access to this information makes patients better informed and inspires confidence.

Data and AI. A system like Navipract can collect good data about how protocols are used and followed. We can analyze that data with AI and convert it into protocol improvements, as is already done in many other industries.

Alerts. More data also means that we can actively warn doctors, for example at steps where complications often occur. This immediately increases the quality of care and the health of the patient and reduces the total cost of care.